Crèche and Cross
Upon the wood of the manger, the Infant King is laid, Upon the wood of the gibbet, one day our debt He'll pay. The cries of God made helpless, through the stable echoing Come from the voice that will one day cry, "God why foresak'st Thou me?" His arms stretch to His Mother, reaching with tender love; Again they'll be stretched outward when He tells her, "Behold thy son." And the hands that now caress her face, as she holds Him to her breast, Will be pierced and bloodied by the nails that affix Him to the Cross. The arms in which He's resting, as she looks down on His Face Will hold His lifeless Body, as with His Blood they're stained. And as she wraps Him in swaddling clothes before she lays Him down, She'll wrap Him again in burial clothes when they bear Him to the tomb. The very darkness of that midnight upon which He is born Foreshadows now the darkened sun upon Good Friday noon. The bitter cold that surrounds Him, there in that stable-cave Foreshadows now the cold hearts of men that will doom God to the grave. But the fiat of His Mother, to conceive and bear a Son Is also to bear a Savior, who'll redeem us by His Blood: As she is the handmaid of the Lord when she bears the holy Babe, So she'll stand there by His side when o'er death is His conquest made. Just as the cloak of midnight is cast back by the Angel throng, So too the night He'll overthrow when He rises with the dawn. And just as the shepherds proclaim their tale to any willing ears, So His shepherds will echo to all the earth, "He is risen, He is not here."